Groove
by YuukoAzmasaki
Summary: She was just an 18-year old with a thirst for adventure and new beginnings. He was a 24 year old who kept to himself and liked to stay in his groove. So when she came, she slowly changed his world in her own subtle way : Ice cream on a cold night.


I

She drove her motorcycle, pushed the engine to top speed and whizzed through the streets of Konoha in a blur, leaving behind a cloud of dust and making a few old people mad because this was an ungodly hour to ride a motorcycle like a madman. If she was a little younger, maybe she would be a little more considerate of others. But not now. This was her moment.

She revelled in the feel of delicate whips of wind through her pink hair, revelled in the silence of the night that made the harsh roar of the engine sound soothing to her ears.

Nights like this was all she ever had to live for- Speeding through the quiet streets of Konoha and relaxing on Hokage mountain with nothing but her favorite snack. It was nights like these that made her blood boil with excitement, a wish for more adrenaline and more adventure. A wish to get out of Konoha and see the world without her mother or father restricting her curiosity to wander around aimlessly.

She didn't know what was more fun : the fatalistic approach at life where she surrendered to fate or the danger of traveling to places no person ever would. Her mother would tell her off and ask her to wake up from such childish expectations. Her father would be more understanding, having been a wanderlust-type himself before he settled down with her mother. A trait he passed down to her and a trait her mother often blamed her father for.

When she was a little girl, she remembered the bedtimes stories he told her - How he traveled the world with very little money, surviving on part time jobs he had from different places and different times, how he met many people and got to know their own quirky way of life. It didn't occur to her at the time that he was hanging with hippies but what he didn't tell her when she was small, was his fear.

He walked, sailed, swam, ran his butt off from place to place because he wanted more out of his life. He wanted to find himself in the midst of his teenage confusion because he didn't know what he wanted to be or what to do. It scared him even more when he was in his last year of high school and he still didn't have a plan after high school. So he sat up from his chair and bolted out from his classroom, ignoring his teacher's shouts of detention and dropping out.

The threats didn't matter because he never went back anyway. He got his bag, packed whatever clothes and sanitaries he needed and left for the road. Normally, he told me that he didn't want to see this behavior from me ever. Not because he was strict, it was because he knew how hard it was shifting from place to place without a single cent to spare for a hungry stomach. But on her 16th birthday, he gave her a motorcycle - a gift her mother disagreed with.

He didn't say it but she knew **exactly **what he was thinking as he handed her the keys to her motorcycle. It was something personal, private and a push- A gesture her mother never understood.

She tipped the bottle to her mouth and felt the hydrating satisfaction as the cold liquid slide down her parched throat. She finished the drink in one go and slammed the bottle on the ground, laughing to herself as she did. She was a weird kid and she knew it, laughing out of nowhere.

She settled her back on the stone ground of the monument and chose to set her sights for the stars instead of sleeping like she usually did. This would probably be the last night she would ever see the stars in Konoha before she was shipped to the land of Spring for her new life in college. She had been excited at first at the thought of a foreign place but she wasn't so keen on the idea when she realized she would have to leave her beloved motorcycle in the treacherous hands of her mother.

He shook her head, she didn't want to imagine her mother dismantling her motorcycle or selling it off. She wanted to see the stars, see if there was a shooting star so that she could make a wish. When she did see it, the glimmer of hope flicker in a single fleeting moment, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she let out the breath she had been holding and continued staring at the night sky.

_It was better to wish on a sky full of stars, _she thought to herself as she positioned one leg on her knee.

She counted the stars one by one and thought of the people she was leaving behind. The brightest star reminded her of Naruto, how he wailed about her decision to go to a college in the land of spring while he was stuck in Konoha during their ramen lunch together. He hugged her and told her he would never let her go, and then started whispering the lyrics Rick Astley's 'Never gonna give you up' into her ear. She laughed hard, her head nuzzled on his shoulder, using it as a cover to stifle her laughter and tears.

The star beside Naruto's star reminded her of Sasuke, the star shone in a way of it's own. When she told him that she was moving, she could see that he was startled but not startled enough to spawn a dramatic response like Naruto from him. He brushed her news off with a sneer and she was a bit crestfallen but that day, he took her out for dango and actually ate the sweet desserts served at the shop. She was surprised when he popped one of the cookies into his mouth and actually swallowed it after a long time of chewing it.

Her heart was tickled pink, Sasuke actually did care.

She felt guilty all of a sudden, having remembered Sasuke first and not Ino. It didn't help that she was the last to know (out of a group of Team 7 and her). Ino was well, a literal roller coaster of emotion. One minute she was hugging and congratulating her for the college offer, the next she was livid and screaming at her for not telling sooner, then she was in tears and bawling her beautiful periwinkle eyes out like she wasn't going to see her again.

_Eyes blue like the atlantic, and I'm going down, like the titanic, _she sang softly as she comforted Ino. She told Ino that she would be lazy in keeping contact but she would try to come home as fast as she can when the holidays started. After she told Ino that, Ino had been attached to her hip until today because she asked her that she wanted to do some last minute packing and be alone. Ino reluctantly complied, but told her that she would be sending her off at the train station.

Then there was Kakashi.

That glimmer in the sky that was never too bright, but it was enough for her to see. That felt like an exact description of what he was in her life. He was like her second dad. He showed her that she was worth and _deserved _so much more in life. He was the one who helped her apply to the college she wanted, and he was also the first one to know that she got the offer in the college in Spring. He asked her what she wanted as both a celebration and parting gift.

The gift was... unexpected.

She took a bite out of her onigiri, sneaking a peek onto her phone to see what the time was. It was 3 a.m in the morning, and she had 4 more hours before she dressed up to leave. She yawned, feeling more tired than she actually thought. So she set her alarm for 6.30 and made herself comfortable on the hard ground. Might as well have some shut eye before the sun starts to rise. After all, this would be her last sun rise here before she left.

He could hear the phone ringing, hear the shrill metallic urgency ring throughout his house. He didn't want to wake up and get out of the comfort of his bed but he wouldn't be rid of the persistent caller who kept calling him even after 6 missed calls. So he rose from the covers and lazily strolled through the phone, grumbling out a rough 'hello' and propping himself on the table so he wouldn't fall from drowsiness.

"You have a guest coming and staying over. Answer your damned phone next time," his father cussed out at him, the stern voice losing his cool. He thought this amusing because his father wasn't the type to have a habit of cursing, deemed it as plebeian behavior and that he was above all that.

"I know father," he answered briefly. The faster he was done with this conversation, the faster he could go back to sleep.

His father scoffed at him. "Pick her up at 2.15 at the train station tomorrow."

"What does she look like?" He asked, massaging his forehead with his free hand to calm the headache he had.

"Pink hair is all you need to know," his father had replied before abruptly putting the phone down, ending the conversation rudely. Itachi would laugh if he could manage straining his voice out at his father's childish behavior.

He knew about the arrival of a new guest. His mother had called him a month ago and asked him to clear a room because there was a college student coming to stay. He did as he was told, he cleaned the boxes out of the room and used the credit card his mother gave him to buy new furniture for the room. He was pretty satisfied with the look of the room at the end of the cleaning session.

He always wondered why his mother was very fussy about the room. She told him that a very important person was heading his way and she meant the world to her. Since it was a she, Itachi had joked with her mother about the guest being a potential bride for him. To his surprise, his mother gave him a serious 'yes' and told him to get to know the girl coming. Even better, Mikoto had approved of her already and wanted her to join the family really badly. He wondered why she couldn't ask Sasuke to marry the girl instead of him.

"Hai hai, okaa-san," he told her but he was not serious in his answer. A girl coming into his life would complicate his life, complicate the routine he set himself the day he set foot in this house. He didn't need that.

But he could never say no to his mother, not that he was obedient but because she would never hear it. There was no point in arguing against her because his mother would have her way at the end of the day and he would just have to go with it. He didn't mind when his mother was quite obstinate, she was rarely hard-headed and so often soft-hearted when Itachi asked for something. It was his father that he hated for his strictness in everything Itachi did like a tyrant.

There was a lot of things he couldn't do when he was living in the same house. Now that he was staying far away from the main household, he certainly had more freedom to do the things he wanted for the longest time without being critically judged by his anal-retentive father.

He certainly hoped that this guest would stay out of his business. That this girl wouldn't throw him off this groove that he danced on for so many years.

**Yeah, I know. So many stories but no completion. But hey, I wanted to experiment with a different length of story and I was inspired by the fics I was reading yesterday. So here it is, my new story. Please, alert, favorite and review! Hopefully you've enjoyed it and I will see you again in the next chapter!**


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